Video 4:40
New conductor leads Darwin Symphony Orchestra

Danielle ParryUpdated
Fri 31 May 2013, 7:58 PM AEST

New Chief Conductor Matthew Wood outlines his vision for the DSO.

Transcript

CLAIRE MACKEY, PRESENTER: The Darwin Symphony Orchestra is known for performing in spectacular locations, and now it's preparing to go where no orchestra has gone before. The DSO will head to Uluru later this year for a world-first concert. At the helm of the plan is the orchestra's new chief conductor Matthew Wood, who's taken up the post after eight years in the UK. This weekend will be his first performance with the DSO, at the Charles Darwin University sound shell. Danielle Parry caught up with Matthew Wood earlier.

DANIELLE PARRY: Matthew Wood, welcome to the program and welcome to the Territory.

MATTHEW WOOD, DSO CHIEF CONDUCTOR: Danielle thank you very much, it's great to be here.

DANIELLE PARRY: You've only just touched down in the Territory, what are your first impressions of Darwin and of the Darwin Symphony Orchestra?

MATTHEW WOOD: Actually I'm really enjoying it, it's wonderful, it's good - the people are incredibly warm, Darwin society is very vibrant and there's a lot of things happening and of course I'm here for the Orchestra, the Darwin Symphony Orchestra, who is a group of people who I really fell in love with as soon as I met them about two months ago now. A group of musicians, most of them volunteers, giving their time to entertain Darwin and the Northern Territory but I think the thing which is different about Darwin and the Darwin Symphony is their committed role to get out into the community and to take music really to, well symphonic music especially, to places which wouldn't normally have access to that form of art.

DANIELLE PARRY: And so are you planning on keeping that very community-driven volunteer type feel to the organisation or are you hoping to professionalise it more?

MATTHEW WOOD: There's places to develop, there's definitely scope here to take the DSO to its next level if you like. There's a small core of professionals and ideally we would like to develop that but also we'd like to develop the community aspect of it as well. We have roughly around about 60 members but we're always on the outlook for people who want to join the Orchestra, who perhaps used to play but had to give it up for some reason, we're always on the lookout for new members but yes the development side of things is something that we're definitely looking at, especially over the next three years.

DANIELLE PARRY: So you'd like the organisation to be bigger?

MATTHEW WOOD: Yeah the organisation to be bigger and that will also give us the opportunity to do bigger things and more repertoire. At the moment we do roughly about seven to eight performances a year and a couple of those at least two are big free outdoor events in Darwin but we also try to put in a tour and this year we're going to be the first orchestra ever to play at Uluru on the 18th and 19th of October. This is a, as you can imagine, a massive undertaking - to take that many people to Uluru is huge but this is what this Orchestra's about and it's taking music to places which wouldn't have access to this and also the diversity - we'll be performing with people like William Barton, James Morrison, Emma Matthews and performing repertoire that's been inspired by Australian Indigenous culture all the way through to Italian Opera, all the way through to modern works written yesterday so this is what we're about and the more members we have on board to help us do that the better.

DANIELLE PARRY: That was very much a trademark over the years of the Darwin Symphony Orchestra, taking music to the bush. I think the most famous of their performances was at Katherine Gorge in 1990, is that the kind of thing you've got in mind?

MATTHEW WOOD: Yes, exactly. I mean our tour to Uluru is similar in scope to that and perhaps even bigger but it's exactly what we're doing and next year is our 25th birthday and so not to jump the gun but we're already talking and thinking about how we can do this and how we can take music to the people of the Territory.

DANIELLE PARRY: All of these things must be very different to what you've been used to in the UK. What were you doing there?

MATTHEW WOOD: I just came back from conducting at the Royal Ballet Covent Garden and this is a new sort of thing for me. I've been involved in dance now for maybe about the last 4, 5 years and I will continue that and I think that part of being a musician, part of being is having new experiences yourself - you keep learning and the more that you work, the more new repertoire you take on, the more people you meet, new orchestras, different orchestras - that's how you grow as a musician, that's how you grow as person, that's how you grow as a conductor.